Embedded Systems

Disaster Management Information System

2011-06-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

Recently, there is a lot of attention on sensor data to be shared with folks all over the world, given the recent event in Japan (Nuclear + Tsunami). It led to unprecedented levels of sale and use of GM counters in Japan and elsewhere. People are sharing their sensor data with others through Pachube etc. Pachube is an internet website allowing people to stream data/information from a
device, building, environment or sensor and store, share & graph its data streams in real time.

Unfortunately, in the event of a calamity, the first casualty is the infrastructure (telephone, network service provider, power etc). In which case, how would you upload your data to such a website? This is where, a service/device such as SPOTConnect comes into picture through their satellite communicating modem which can be paired with sensors using bluetooth to upload data to any website. Unfortunately, this service is not available worldwide (India, Russia not covered).

However, we could use Ham radio satellites, to offer the same functionality. With Ham radio satellites, there might be issues of who all could use them (Hams would use them for sure, but who else?) but the good part is that they are usually launched gratis by respective space agencies. What we need to do is (a) build LEO satellites (b) suitable modems (c) use Pachube like network and such a system could be of great use in disaster information system/management system.

Instead of Ham satellites, one could also think of these CubeSats, which many Indian educational institutes are these days involved in, to offer the same functionality for non-profit applications such as the one described here.

I am looking for connecting with people/agencies/interested parties to collaborate on this project. I already have a Ham radio license and some experience building ham radio equipment which would be very handy for this project.

I believe that the National Disaster Management Authority would be very much interested in this project. If you are interested, drop me a mail...

Monome rebuild

2011-02-26T08:29:00.000-08:00

During my recent visit to the CeC festival, I met Abhinay Khoparzi and he showed me a rebuild of Monome music controllers. I just fell in love with these. I am now planning to build my own using the Arduino platform. The Monome website shows various applications, other than generating/controlling music. I have some applications of my own in mind, such as a controller for the ceiling lights I am planning to install in my office or RSS feed display.

Stay tuned.

LED as a Light Sensor and more....

2006-11-09T06:26:00.000-08:00

Recently got interested in the use of a normal LED as a light sensor. Its amazing, but there seems to be some conspiracy on the part of the electronics professionals, in keeping this interesting and wonderful physical phenomenon, hidden from public. Or is it ignorance?

Just take a normal voltmeter (or a digital multimeter) and connect the two terminals of any (say red) LED to the voltmeter. Cover the LED with your hands and note the voltage on the voltmeter. It should read close to 0. Now expose this LED to bright light. What do you observe?

The only book that talks about this is by Forrest Mims.

We just published a Design Idea in EDN on this topic.

The natural extension to the idea of LED as a touch sensor, is to use commonly available 5x7 or 8x8 LED matrix displays as a touch panel. We have been toying with this idea for some time now and have made some interesting progress. Its not very straight forward, but we are getting there...

Dhananjay Gadre

Travelogger: A Gadget to Record and Document Your Travel Memories

2006-10-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

I just came back from a small trip to Manali and Kullu. While there, we also visited Rohtang Pass (Altitude: 4000 meters) and Manikarn. Manikarn has hot water springs and we cooked rice and potatoes in the boiling water (temperature: about 95 degrees Celsius).

On the way to Rohtang on the second day of our trip, there was a small mishap. We lost our beloved Nikon Coolpix 4100 digital camera. I guess at that altitude with very low oxygen levels, I wasnt as sharp to realize when the camera slipped off my shoulders. The loss was a little damper to an otherwise wonderful trip.

But, there was a bright side to the loss. It made me think of a device that would help travellers to record and document their travels. Here is what I had wrote on 24th October 2006, at the back of a restaurant bill:

I have always faced this problem while travelling: The desire to take notes of what ever is happenning, correlate the photos I take and maybe even add more information... but Once its over, I feel too lazy to do anything...

Here is a technology solution:

A battery powered portable device with a camera, a microphone, memory storage using SD card or something similar, temperature sensor, humidity sensor, optional GPS.

Camera is similar to the ones in mobile phones these days. Not too fancy. Fixed focus, hands off operation.

The user wears the camera on a headband. The mic is used to record travel anecdotes, travel related information as it happens.. in the form of a running commentary. Intermittently, a time stamp is also taken, as he user dictates into the mic. The speech stored on the SD card is interspersed with images, temperature, humidy readings etc. Similarly, user coordinates can also be recorded if GPS unit available and stored.

Eventually, all the information stored on the SD card is downloaded onto the PC and a speech to text program is used to convert to text. Interspersed with temperature, humidity, coordinate information and photographs, a custom PC software converts all data in to a HTML webpage!

Thus in the end, you have a Travel-Log.

I was really excited about my idea and on the first opportunity I got to get online, I talked to Anurag.

And he started laughing. He told me, I was reinventing something! Turns out that Microsoft has put in big bucks on a similar (OK, I overshot a lil bit) project titled MyLifeBits, pioneered by Gordon Bell, Jim Gemmell and others. They added a camera component to this project. The camera, Sensecam, is also developed in a Microsoft lab.

It is interesting to note that the MyLifeBits project has its genesis in the Memex Device, that was described in the July 1945 article in The Atlantic Monthly, titled "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush. No relation to the American president Bush apparently.

The upshot is that my idea of a Travelogger is very similar to the one being pursued by other people, except for the speech to text part that I am rooting for, in my device.

A few students from the current batch of ECE students at NSIT have now decided to pursue this as part of their B.Tech. final year project. I dont see any glitch in its implementation. By great coincidence, I have the major part, a CMOS Camera module, required for this project.

Dhananjay Gadre

PS: While in Manali, you rely upon Yash Pal (cell number: 09816271899) to drive you around in his cosy lil Maruti Alto. Highly recommended for his promptness and reasonable charges.

Brain Waves for Control

2006-10-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

When I wrote the AVR Book , I added a figure (seen on the left), to show how in remote future, you might be able to download programs in a Microcontroller.

How naive I was!

Because, it seems controlling gadgets with brainwaves is not so futuristic afterall! A company called IBVA Technologies (Interactive Brainwave Visual Analyzer) has been in the business of creating hardware and software for many computer platforms, to use Brainwaves to control other programs on the computer, or other gadgets. And they have been doing this for a long time now.

Awesome!

Hope to see this technology being made available more easily so that it can be used in day to day applications.

Dhananjay Gadre

Chumby: The Hacker's Dream Machine

2006-08-29T01:13:00.000-07:00

Chumby Industries makes these Chumby Devices. Chumby heralds a new dawn for open source hardware and software. The complete package is availble for anyone to customize the gadget.

The device isnt for sale yet, but the company is targetting a US$150 or less for this crafty contraption. The feature are:

* 266 MHz ARM controller (the MX21 by Freescale)
* 32 MB SDRAM running at 133 MHz bus speed
* 64 MB NAND FLASH ROM
* 320x240 3.5" TFT LCD with PWM-controlled LED backlighting
* Stereo 2W speakers
* Headphone output
* Ambient light sensor
* Bend sensor (to pick up when you squeeze the chumby)
* Two USB 2.0 ports, one on the main board and one on the outerware electronics
* WiFi connectivity via a USB dongle plugged into the main board
* Circuitry to detect the presence of wall adapter power and auto-fallback to backup battery power
* Switching power supply network that can eat between 6V and 14V
* Available microphone input on the chumbilical bus
* Available SPI bus on the chumbilical bus
* Serial debug port set to 115200 8N1.

And it runs embedded Linux.

As it is, Chumby isnt targeted as a portable device. More like a bedside,
grid-powered device.

Chumby has a hardware support package that offers:

* Support for the ADXL3XX series of pin-compatible accelerometers (3-axis and 2-axis versions available)
* Up to 6 available 12-bit analog inputs
* Limited support for servo motor drivers (1-high resolution driver, and 3 low-res drivers)
* 8x 3.3V-compatible digital inputs
* 8x 5.0V-swing digital outputs
* 8x 1-A DC motor driver channels (can be configured for high or low side driving to make an H-bridge configuration), with support for motor voltages between 5.5V and 24.5V
* A small prototyping area for you to add on quick hacks

Truely, a Hacker's Dream.

Dhananjay V. Gadre

The Fab Lab Initiative

2006-06-07T11:11:00.001-07:00

The Fab Lab program is an educational outreach initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Bits and Atmos (CBA). The CBA is directed by Professor Neil Gershenfeld, who in 2004 was named to the "Scientific American 50" the magazine's annual list of leaders in science and technology.

Currently, Fab lab operates in rural India, Norway, Ghana, Costa Rica, South Africa and Boston. More Fab labs are being considered. Each Fab lab owns a group of off the shelf industrial-grade fabrication and electronics tools, wrapped in open source software and programs written by the folks at the Center for Bits and Atoms. The list of the tools is interesting.

The idea behind a Fab lab is to provide a rapid prototyping platform so as to encourage local entrepreneurs to take their own ideas from the drawing board to prototypes to starting local micro businesses. This effort is backed by an international consortium of engineers to hel solve problems and offer design solutions to the local community.

One of the interesting projects to come out of the Fab Lab initiative, is the Internet 0 project, by Neil and his team. Internet 0 has profound implications for networking small devices for home and offices for control and data acquisition. A more detailed description appeared in the October 2004 edition of the Scientific American.

I came to know about Fab Lab after I found that they use my AVR book in their program. Since then there have been frequent interactions between me and Neil Gershenfeld. Hopefully a Fab Lab would open in Delhi soon.

Dhananjay V. Gadre

Write Only Memory

2006-05-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

Although its way past all fools day, I recently discovered Bob Pease's article on the origins of the Write Only Memory.

Check out the data sheet of Write Only Memory for some real fun.

Dhananjay V. Gadre

AVR2006 Contest - An Update

2006-05-30T04:38:00.000-07:00

Atmel corporation and Circuit Cellar have organized the AVR2006 Design Contest.

The contest has been on for quite some time now. The chip and development tools samples have been exhausted which indicates the utter popularity of this family of controllers as well as the popularity of Circuit Cellar contests!

The last date of submission of entries has now been extended to August 16, 2006. The participants can design using any of the following AVR components: AT90CAN128,AT90CAN32, ATmega32, ATmega16, ATmega168, ATmega169, ATmega88, ATtiny85, AT90PWM2, AT90PWM3, ATmega48, ATtiny45, ATtiny25 and ATtiny13.

The ATxxPWM are the newer parts from Atmel, targeted towards designing lighting and motor controls and have integrated D/A converter and power factor correction.

As usual, a heavy response is expected for this contest. Although the participants would miss designing with the new PicoPower AVR devices which were introduced after the contest was thrown open.

Happy Designing...

Dhananjay V. Gadre

The Ubiquitous Remote Control

2006-05-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

I recently came across an article (thanks to Anurag Chugh for the link) in the March 2006 issue IEEE Spectrum, by Rober W. Lucky, titled Remote Control. A remote control is one piece of ubiquitious, mundane hardware that you take for granted. One is likely to own a multiple of these devices, for a variety of consumer entertainment electronics.

Bob explains his encounter with a remote-less, bargain price HDTV Tuner and how he set about getting a "Universal Remote" to work with the tuner. I was curious to know more details of all the websites dedicated to remote controls and I contacted him. It turns out that many many brands of remote controls are available, but all of them are made by a single manufacturer! Hi-fi Remote is one of the most popular websites dedicated to remote controls, provides a wealth of inside information.

Dhananjay V. Gadre

The Truth about Windows Embedded Students Challenge (WESC) 2006 Finals Projects

2006-05-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Corporation sponsored an international competition, titled Windows Embedded Student Challenge 2006. This contest was first organised in 2004 and has been held ever since. Due to the involvement of Microsoft, the competition attracts huge interest from the student community.

As part of the contest, the organizers (Microsoft Corporation) propose a theme for the competition and expects participating team to design and build projects in line with the theme. To help the design and implementation, it provides free hardware and software tools. The hardware platform is an x86 derived single board computer, called Ebox. The software tools includes the Windows CE RTOS development suite.

Participants are expected to design their projects around the Ebox and WinCE RTOS.

This year around 230 teams sent proposals to the organizers, out of which 200 teams were selected and were provided with the abovementioned tools.

Out of these 200 teams, about 185 teams sent final reports which were evaluated by a team of judges to select the top 30 projects. The list of these top 30 teams together with their reports is available here.

This year, the theme for the contest was "Preserving, Protecting and Enhancing the Environment".

The teams are supposed to follow eligibility rules as listed on the Windows Challenge website. One assumes that teams that do not meet the eligibility criterion, will be inelligible? Or so I thought.

Also, since this is a Microsoft spondored project, it is obvious that Microsoft's motive is to try and popularize the use of WInCE RTOS amongst the student community. The choice of Ebox is only to allow the operation of WInCE RTOS. It could as well have been any other hardware platform.

It is therefore natural to expect that a participant would develop a project that would justify the use of Ebox and WinCE RTOS. Or am I too naive to assume that?

It is worthwhile to note that the Ebox is a serious piece of hardware. It is an Vortex86 200 Mhz processor based, small foorprint embedded system with a serial port, a parallel port, 3 USB ports, an ethernet port, AV'97 audio, PS2 mouse and keyboard ports, VGA port. The Ebox consumes about 10W of power in active mode.

I was a mentor to a team from NSIT, which in my opinion implemented a wonderful project (which btw, is being patented now). Unfortunately, the judges did not deem the project as worthy of selection in the final 30 list.

My team brought to my notice that some of the teams did not meet the eligibility criterion. They also mentioned that many projects seemed very trivial for an Ebox. Many infact do not need any RTOS at all.

I then decided to read all the reports and make an assessment about such projects, which, in my opinion do not justify the use of an EBox and WinCE RTOS. My brief report about such projects is available here.

Read it for yourself and make your own judgement and decide if these selected project deserve to be in top 30 by any measurement metrics? If you would like to read my team's report for comparison sake or otherwise, send me a mail at dvgadre@gmail.com and I will be more than glad to mail you a copy.

I have brought this to the notice of the organizers of WESC'06 but they have decided to ignore my feedback and go ahead with the contest as per the schedule.

I guess its bye bye future Microsoft contests, as far as I am concerned.

Dhananjay V. Gadre

Stephen P. Morse -- and the 8086 Book

2006-04-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

Stephen P. More is the Grand Daddy of the processor running your PC. He was the lead designer of the 8086. He also authored a short and sweet book titled, "The 8086/8088 Primer", which I liked very much as a student, way back. It turns out that Mr. Morse has decided to make the book available online here on his website.

Its a wonderful read. Thank you Mr. Morse!

Dhananjay Gadre

On Death and Embedded Systems

2006-03-05T02:23:00.000-08:00

The queer thing about death is that you die only once. And by then its too late. You of all people cannot participate in your own death. Why am I talking about death and whats it got to do with Embedded Systems?

Something happened today, about which I wrote on another blogsite. My mind has been thinking about death in general since then.

With nuclear families being the norm these days, the chances are that your death would go un-noticed. I for one would like my friends and family to know about my death, as and when it happens. So that they dont have to worry about me there after. Dont get me wrong. I am in no hurry for that to happen.

But what I see here, is a possible business opportunity. Most other things are already in place. Almost every one carries a mobile phone. Even if you dont, no worries. Just get a lil piece of sensor silicon, with a valid SIM card on it, implanted in your body. This sensor monitors your heart. Once your heart stops working, you are dead. The sensor detects that and triggers a series of events. Prior to your death, you must compose a letter and a access database of family and friends that you would want to be notified in the event of your death. The letter could read as follows:

Dear _(Name picked from the Access Database)_

With profound sorrow, I wish to inform you of my untimely death. The end was obviously unexpected. I died at (coordinates of the location when your heart stopped working as detected by the sensor chip) on (time and date, again as detected by the sensor chip).

Given your busy schedule, please do not bother to visit my home to offer your condolences. As you wont have to drive to my residence, It will also save the already fragile environment (less emissions etc.), unless ofocurse, you plan to walk to my home.

Yours Truely, although, not any more

XYZ

All the above would be managed through the network of an Event Organizer. The sensor chip either signals your death to your mobile phone, which in turn sends out a text message to the Event Organizer, with whom you have registered yourself with, or sends out a text message on its own (with its embedded SIM card) to the event organizer's network. The Event Organizer's network, in turns mails out the above mentioned letter to your friends and family.

This sensor chip has yet to be developed and there in lies the business opportunity and big bucks.

Dhananjay Gadre

PS: Please make it a point to die where there is cell phone coverage.

I know there is no Free Lunch...

2006-03-01T23:15:00.000-08:00

I am a little annoyed. Annoyed at not getting the promised 'free' programmer kit from TI. I was made to believe that a programmer and chips of my choice can be sent to me; I just needed to say which ones I wanted. Turns out that the gentleman wanted me to fill out a form with zillion types of information about my department and all other statistics. I simply dont have that kind of time to gather that information. And further, just filling out this form wasnt the end of the story. The gentleman said and I quote "I will let you know if we have granted your request". Holy Moly.

I have quietly expressed my inability to take time out to fill out the form. Although what I meant was, Thanks but no, thanks. I dont wish to be judged. Not for something that costs as little as $100.

I have thrived on 'free' stuff. But please understand there is no free stuff. Never has been. Its always a give and take situation. Big companies give out 'free' samples, so that the customer can avoid the hassle of going through the entire drill of making an invoice, getting approval etc etc. just to evaluate a component. This saves a lot of time on the customer's end. If he does get to evaluate the sample there is a good chance that he would place order for larger quantities. One of the best sample offering companies is Maxim. You simply fill out a few details, end application etc and samples are on the way. To be fair, TI also offers free samples in a similar fashion.

So why am I complaining?

When you expect something more than free chip samples (say an evaluation board), you must do something to compensate the company in other ways. What can that be? How about some publicity? How about an article in a well read magazine/journal etc? Remember, 2"X1" advertisement in a reasonably popular magazine costs in the range of US$1000. I know, since I pushed the publisher of my first book to insert a small ad in Circuit Cellar a few years ago and they said it cost them $1000.

This arrangement of mutual benefit has worked reasonably well for me. I have contacted numerous companies across the world, with requests for 'free' whatever they had that interested me and most have responded favorably. And its not because I cant afford to buy it. Its because of all the red tape that exists in India. More so with importing stuff. I am currently trying to get a (free) shipment from Atmel released from the local customs.

In most cases I have managed to do something useful with their 'free' stuff and eventually managed to publish it in various journals.

The upshot of all this is, that the beginning of my affair with MSP430 is going to get postponed. Although I am not going to let this little irritant come between me and MSP430, as it turns out that MSP430 has a built-in bootloader that allows you to quickly download your program from the PC using a standard RS-232 port, into the flash memory of the MSP430 and test it as quickly.

Amen.

Dhananjay V. Gadre

AVR Butterfly can indeed be used as a component for AVR2006

2006-03-01T06:23:00.000-08:00

I just heard from Steve Ciarcia, and he says Yes! The Butterfly can indeed be used as a component as part of the AVR2006 design contest.

Dhananjay Gadre

AVR Contest 2006 on Circuit Cellar

2006-02-28T19:37:00.000-08:00

Circuit Cellar is organizing a contest for design projects using the AVR microcontrollers. The AVR2006, sponsored by Atmel started February 27 and will complete on July 19, 2006.

The eligible devices from the AVR stable are: AT90CAN32/128, AT90PWM2/3, ATmega16/32/48/88/168/169, and ATtiny13/25/45/85.

Total prize money is USD 15000.

As part of the competition, participants, after registration, can request a free Butterfly evaluation kit and chip samples. The sample chips will be two numbers of ATtiny13, ATmega16, ATmega88, AT90CAN128, or AT90PWM3 only.

At this point I not sure, if one can make use of the Butterfly itself as part of the project. I have asked the contest administrator and awaiting a response.

Happy Designing....

Dhananjay Gadre

Hands-On Engineering

2006-02-28T02:32:00.000-08:00

India has positioned itself nicely as a major software development center. We could achieve this position due to our inherent strengths in mathematics, which was leveraged appropriately in software engineering, due to the availability of a level playing field in terms of available computing platforms to the masses (cheap PCs).

The same cannot be said of other fields of engineering, namely electronics hardware. There are a few reasons for this situation. The prime reason has been the unavailability of level playing field in terms of cutting edge technology and tools, since the required technology and tools in the field of electronics hardware development require high capital cost. The government has been lacking in ideas and planning in this direction on one hand, while the industry has been subservient in its approach towards building a state of the art industry, pushing itself as a mere screw-driver industry and the academia has been a moot spectator for want of funds as well as a lack of vociferous demand for the required inputs. The academia is also guilty of lacking in ideas and grooming students who are interested in hardware development. Further damage was done to the possible prospects of building a world-class hardware industry, as graduate engineers were and are being lured into management fields as well as the increasing demands of the software industry guzzling up and poaching bright hardware trained engineers. That the dot com bubble burst a few years ago was a welcome event, though, in a short term it did reduce employment prospects of the graduating engineers.

However, since that time, there has been renewed interest amongst the students of electronics engineering streams to seek appropriate jobs. However, a lot needs to be done to promote India as a development center in the field of electronics hardware.

One of the major opportunity that educational institutes have in promoting interest in hardware aspects of electronics, is to relate the fields of study with needs of the masses and the general availability of high tech tools in use in common everyday life. One method would be to promote hobby fields related to electronics hardware amongst the students. One such hobby is in the field of robotics and another is in the field of Ham Radio (Amateur Radio). By involving the students in these hobbies, in the early part of their training in an engineering college, their interest can be captured, retained and cultivated. It is more than likely, that such students would grow up and contribute in these fields, which are core fields of electronics hardware industry, since modern robotics and Ham radio uses embedded computers, communications and microelectronics.

To be able to attract students to such hobbies, it is pertinent that the faculty itself should be interested in these fields, to begin with.

At a more formal level, the electronics-engineering curriculum can insist upon mandatory hardware oriented projects as part of the final year projects and a zero tolerance towards pure software or pure simulation based projects. In this direction, the industry can contribute tremendously, instead of paying just a lip service, as is currently the situation.

The academia, on their part should create a task force to identify fields, which have potential as future technologies, and cultivate and promote researchers and students in those fields.

The faculty in engineering colleges is woefully inadequately equipped to appreciate and handle available high technology. How many faculty members in colleges have access to computers on a 24x7 basis, leave alone access to a laptop or a PDA? The management of these colleges, and government, managing public institutes should dwell on this aspect and invest sufficient funds in these tools. They must realize that computers, laptops and PDAs are not items of luxury, but tools that not only promote efficiency, but also have the potential of germinating new ideas in the field of electronics hardware.

These educational institutes should seriously identify faculty members with industrial experience and tap their potential and expertise to create local development centers to help and augment the efforts of the industry. These development centers should use student population to develop ideas and prototypes. The educational institutes should also think seriously towards creating incubation centers for developing technologies by graduating students. These incubation centers should not only provide seed money but also share the capital equipment in an institute.

There has to be a paradigm shift in the way an engineering faculty member can share his experience with the industry. Currently, the educational institutes restrict and regulate the financial aspects of these activities, which demoralize an interested faculty member. The institutes should promote hands-on industrial activities by faculty members, which will go a long way in establishing India as a major hub of electronics hardware development.

Dhananjay V. Gadre

Words are cheap but I prefer silent eloquence

2006-02-28T02:24:00.000-08:00

They say a picture is worth 1000 words. So whats the worth of a video?

Check this one out. Seems to work only with VLC media player.

Arkanoid game being played on an oscilloscope screen.

Dhananjay Gadre

Talking Thermometer...a small video..

2006-02-27T01:31:00.000-08:00

I thought the talking thermometer is such a cool device, I would put out a small video of it in action here. Currently, it speaks out in English, but it can be reprogrammed to speak out in Hindi, Urdu, German, Mandarin.. whatever.

Download the video here.

Dhananjay Gadre

Shake Shake Shake a lil.. to change your TV channel...

2006-02-27T00:24:00.000-08:00

While on the subject of musclepowered energy sources, I hit upon this bright idea. Have Googled to find out if any such thing already exists. None. Zilch. Nada. Hmmmmm.. maybe I should get it patented :)

Although I am not much of a couch potato, watching TV, i get bothered having to change batteries on my TV remote once every few months. That we are putting a lot of used batteries in the trash (even in a segregated way) is an issue of serious concern to everyone. Increased use of embedded portable devices (mobile phones, TV remote, cordless phones etc..) in our lives will only add to this trash. Alternative power sources need to be looked into. A supercap (Supercap, Goldcap, Ultracap) is an interesting alternative, specially if you have a ready source of power available nearby, all you need to do is charge your supercap. And a supercap charges really quickly. I saw this article a while ago: a 9V battery footprint hiding a supercap inside.

And my idea uses a supercap, a small circuit and a shake shake shake generator with your TV remote and presto.. you get a TV remote without batteries! You wanna change your TV channel or crank up/down the volume? Work for it mate.. Shake it a lil bit and press that switch.

Off to the patent office...

Dhananjay Gadre

Handshake for Power and all that...

2006-02-26T22:46:00.000-08:00

10:56 am on 27th February 2006, I get a mail from Professor Prabhat Ranjan (from DA-IICT), my collaborator in WSN (for more about WSN, see my previous post) saying that he has bought a handshake powered torch and he intends to explore the feasibility of using the built-in dynamo for powering WSN nodes. Good Idea I say. So we decide to first try these generators on a suitable Homo Sapien. Someone who is a keen and regular jogger or likes to bike. We could hang the generator around his/her neck and see how much power it belts out.

I suggest him a way to measure this power. Use one of the plenty of AVR Butterfly devices I have in stock, courtesy Lars Aarrestaad from Atmel, Norway. Now the Butterfly is a really cool portable computer as you see here. In its less than credit card sized footprint, it packs a LCD display, AVR controller, piezo buzzer, thermister based thermometer, LDR based light sensor, a voltmeter, 4-way joystick and a 4-megabit dataflash data storage chip. All this is powered with an on board 3V lithium coin cell; and it costs USD20 approximately. Nice price, nice power consumtion..

My students Gaurav Ajwani (ICE, 8th semester) and Sparsh Arun (ECE, 8th semester) have been working on a bicycle computer using a Butterfly and they are almost done (you would get to read all about it in a future issue of MakeZine ), so they had all the software tools to adapt their bicycle computer to record power being outut from this handshaking generator. Just record the output voltage on a fixed resistor, R, and power is V*V/R. Sample close enough and keep adding area under the curve and you would get an estimate of energy being produced by the generator.

Professor Ranjan... you would have this recording contraption by the end of the week in your mailbox :)

Dhananjay Gadre

Life with MSP430

2006-02-26T19:21:00.000-08:00

I am excited about the soon-to-arrive MSP430 programmer and a few sample chips, courtesy Adrian Valenzuela from TI. MSP340 has been on my radar for quite sometime, but never had a real need to play with another 8/16-bit chip. AVR wasnt bad even back then and its gotten very good now. It also got a big macho brother now, the AVR32. But more about them later...

Lately, I have become interested in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). One of the interesting applications that WSNs have been used in is the tracking of wild animals. ZebraNet and Great Duck Island experiments are interesting and they show how useful the WSN can be in getting information that was previously impossible to get.

Now, WSN would use a microcontroller and low power IS prime importance. MSP430's claim to fame is the extra low current consumption capabilities. I heard folklore showing a MSP430 run some application off a lemon battery. I sure will try to test that claim. Thats the biggest reason I am going to play around with MSP430.

Its heartwarming to know that MSP430 has GCC toolchain called mspgcc. So that should take care of expensive software tools. Although, in India, its still difficult to buy MSP parts as easily as AVR or 8051 derivatives. Till then, beg for samples, borrow or steal...

Dhananjay Gadre

Bhagidari Mela at Pragati Maidan showcasing projects done at CEDT, NSIT.

2006-02-26T07:27:00.000-08:00

The Goverment of NCT of Delhi organised a Bhagidari Mela on 25th February, 2006 at Pragati Maidan. We (NSIT, www.nsit.ac.in) as part of the Department of Technical Training and Education were invited to participate in the Mela and put up a stall displaying the various stuff we do at NSIT.

CEDT being an integral, active and happenning part of NSIT, decided to put up a few projects done by the students for display at the Mela. We also made available a small brochure describing the activities of CEDT to the visitors of the Mela.

The projects displayed by CEDT were: an Internet Controlled Robot (being developed and managed by Arjun Sarwal and Anish Mangal students of ECE, 4th semester), a Talking Thermometer (Manish Garg and Abhishek, ECE 8th semester) which was the focus of everyone's attention for all the sound it made, Electronic Attendance Register System (Amrinder Singh Bindra and party, 8th sem ECE) and the Smart Conference Tag.

In all, it was fun and a lot of attention.

Back to work now...

Dhananjay Gadre